Giving MGoThanks 2016

 As we slide into another holiday season here at MGoBlog and, perhaps more importantly to many of us, the most meaningful iteration of The Game that we’ve witnessed in a decade, I think we should take a moment to look back and reflect about how wonderful this season has been for the most part and how the spirit of community seems to live on around our shared Internet home.

When Jim Harbaugh first landed at Detroit Metro on a cold December day in 2014, I don’t know that any of us really imagined just how sudden – in relative terms – the transformation of a floundering Michigan football program would be. I don’t know that many of us thought that, in his second year, we would walk into Columbus playing for a shot at the Big Ten Championship Game and quite likely a shot in the College Football Playoff, assuming all goes well. For myself, I figured we would get there, but a mere 23 months into his tenure? My estimate was admittedly more conservative. I am rather pleased that I am wrong on that one, of course.

 I think that is definitely one thing we should all be thankful for – we’re nationally relevant, we are talked about daily in mostly positive terms and we have a team that we always knew could be good, but that it would take the right guidance and the right staff. That is what we’re seeing, this rapid transformation of talent into the best that it can be, taking the program to heights that many of us took for granted in years past. Hopefully, we never take it for granted again, having seen “the other side” of the football equation now.

As for the blog itself, for as many times as I sit here and threaten to ragequit the whole modding thing for various reasons, I don’t actually pull the trigger, and the reason I haven’t to date has much to do with the community here. This blog really is a unique one in sports, full of informative content generated by the staff and users alike. It attracts the highly engaged, well-educated fans which brings the level of discussion in a lot of threads to places that many other blogs could only dream of going. This blog is fun place to be of service, and I am thankful for that opportunity to be of service.

More importantly, of course, I think we should all be thankful for each other being here, as many of us have gotten one or two other users through some hairy moments in their MGoLife or MGoFandom, and that’s more a tribute to the professional and personal resources made available by simply having the contributors that we do. There’s a certain power in that which I feel cannot be underestimated, and despite personal differences and other things which might divide some of us, we seem to come together as Wolverines at all the right moments, and that’s hard for a lot blogs – let alone organizations – to achieve.

As you sit down with family this Thanksgiving  to share a meal, share stories, or in my case, psychologically prepare yourself to be upset with the Lions, take a moment to remember that even in your online life, as an MGoBlogger and Michigan fan, you have so much more to be thankful for, and who knows? Perhaps those thoughts distract you from having to listen to the same stories being rehashed at the dinner table tomorrow. After all, I know which site many of us will be on when we can no longer take the tedium of some uncle our aunt or whatnot. 

Have an excellent Thanksgiving and Go Blue,

- LSAClassOf2000